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We were all listening to Grinderman on the way to rehearsal the other week and trying to articulate why we feel so close in spirit to Nick Cave as an artist if not necessarily as a person. This lecture explains a lot:
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=800055&lastnode_id=11774
How did the show in Madison, WI go last Saturday night? Let us paint the scene for you. We arrived from Chicago at 6:30pm and ate at Lena's Deli. It's a kosher restaurant shaped like a carousel with multiple whirring figurines buzzing overhead. A 3 foot wooden Mighty Mouse followed a track above our heads and protected our matsa ball soups and corned beef sandwhices. After fighting over the last fried pickle, we checked in at the venue. A typical bar with a performance space on one side but with added amenities like a stripper's pole. With plenty of time before we had to be onstage, we went on the town in Madison. The downtown area centers around the capitol building which is lit up at night, very beautiful. We did a little shopping, a little cheese-curd eating, trying to whittle away the hours until we had to perform. One great way we found to pass the time is to play "In the Year 2000", a fun little game where the group sings "In the Year 2000" in a high falsetto voice and then each person takes turns spontaneously coming up with a prediction. Our favorite was Jeff who, inspired by Madison's architecture, predicted that "In the year 2000, capitol buildings will be called lower-case buildings". I'd say you had to be there but I'm kind of glad you weren't.
When it was finally time for us to do our set, the band (with the exception of Nate who was fast asleep for much of the trip) unloaded the equipment and set it up behind the bar only to have it pour down rain on us unexpectedly. An ominous sign. The rain stopped in time for the band before us to unload their gear. We were told we'd have over an hour to play and we were looking forward to it but 25 minutes into our show the sound guy told us we had one more song. It wasn't that he didn't like our music. It was just that the last band, who was missing up to that point, had arrived with a bunch of their friends and so I guess they had to be moved on stage ASAP so the bar could capitalize on the opportunity to sell more booze. Whatever the reason, we had driven 3 hours to Madison just to play a 25 minute show for people who seemed to care less about music. We're not sure if we gained any fans. One drunken girl decided to take a swing or two on the stripper's pole during "Beat Them to Hell" and one guy stayed seated at a table seemingly in rapt attention. But when the lights came up it was clear he was completely wasted. He wouldn't remember our name in the morning.
We left there at 1am, losing a bit of money on gas. After dropping Nate and Joel off, Jeff and Grant got home at 5am. We were left with a bad taste in our mouth and wanting to do another show right away. But, alas, we probably won't play another one until after the new year. Our busy October and November will give way to some time to recover from sleep deprivation and long-lasting colds and coughs. Ah, but there's still plenty to do in a band besides play shows. We're working with triggers now and new music and setting up shows for next year.
On Monday, we started working on a new song that Grant has been messing around with for a while. As a reward for reading this entire blog entry, you can listen to half of the unfinished song.
Apparently our sarcasm was not clear on the last post about U2. We are not planning on burning our U2 cd's.
In fact, in our shows we sometimes cover U2's "Love Rescue Me", a song that this U2 critic says is Satanic. Unfortunately, all this anti-U2 video shows is the narrator's ignorance about the Bible and his inability to hear the emotional musical landscape behind U2's lyrics. When Bono says "I have cursed thy rod and staff, they no longer comfort me. Love, rescue me," Bono recognizes that, in the Psalm, the biblical rod and staff represent the Law and the singer says he finds salvation not in the Law but in Love. That's pretty much what Jesus was saying to the Pharisees and Paul was saying in his letter to the Romans.
Yeah, but why was Bono wearing devil's horns as "McPhisto" in the late 90's? The character was partly based on C.S. Lewis' "Screwtape Letters", a book that is written from the perspective of a demon to show how people are tempted. There's a hint in the U2 video, "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" that this character refers to Lewis' book. Check out when the cartoon character McPhisto is almost hit by a limousine and falls into a trash heap. What's he reading? Aha! So C.S. Lewis is of the devil because he takes on the character of a demon! (that was sarcasm)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31bd0bNI-jA
The video is about double personalities, the good and bad man, the preacher and the rock star. This duality is something the apostle Paul knows all about (Romans 7:15-24). Apparently our U2 critic thinks being a good Christian leaves no room for making mistakes. I admire Bono's openness with the conflicts in his life as a rock star. I think that honesty might be why so many people in the world relate to U2 more than they relate to the average "christian" contemporary music band that pretends everything is always super-duper and gay.
In case you missed it, here's what went down at Reggie's last Friday night:
Disaster at Reggies Live 11-02-07.mov
Now the stars have found a resting place and OVERHANG can catch up on some business matters after a busy month. After this weekend's gig in Madison, WI, we're also going to start playing around with drum triggers and new music!
OVERHANG took time out of their rehearsal last night to listen to their "live" broadcast of themselves playing songs from "Another Hole For You to Crawl Into". We were kind of anxious and hyper-critical, waiting on every slip-up and wishing we could do some things over, but it's live--no do-overs. Grant's vocals on the first two songs were sliding in and out of tune, Jeff flubbed a few drum parts, Joel's missed entrance in Arrived was left in, the mix was more naked than we're used to hearing, Nate wasn't dressed appropriately for radio. But all-in-all, it was fun to hear the raw OVERHANG. If anything, it inspired us that we sound tight and together as a live unit. Tonight's show at Reggie's will be yet another opportunity to display the OVERHANG thing. We are looking forward to playing loud rock music at a venue that, from what we hear, is big enough to handle loud music. We're scheduled to go on at Reggie's at 8pm tonight. Bring some extra money along to buy a couple cd's.